Both have advantages and disadvantages.
I think the choice comes down to what you want to achieve and your type of client.
Automation is not dead, its just harder and a bit more technical. You’d most likely need to invest a bit and spend a lot of time doing your own tests.
Manual at the moment is tedious, you need systems in place to track and takes time. It’s also difficult to scale if you work alone.
Best of luck on your journey.
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If you can get a decent setup and get it working properly without blocks, automation hands down. If your struggling why not go manual whilst your figuring settings out etc?
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I think I’m going to keep plugging away at automation and try to master it. I have a lot going on in my life so finding time to do it manually and do all the learning as well. Maybe I’m just too optimistic.
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thats what i did 3 years ago… i tried doing it manually for months, then found and learned automation, never went back. Its so much info but you’ll get it just read it night and day. Also you’ll appreciate automation once you’ve tried to do it manually, never ever going back to that hahaha
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i will suggest you to do manual work instead of automation, there are ton of problems going on with automation, instagram is striking hard against bots, and fixing daily blocks with temporary solution is a big headache, i will suggest you to do instagram manual growth we are doing instagram manual growth from long time and results are great
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In general, you will have an easier time growing accounts manually. With all the blocks going on, most people including me experience less problems doing manual follows. But it is simply not scalable especially because you have to keep track of all the accounts you have already followed and still need to unfollow.
Do this for 1 account, ok it’s possible. But multiple accounts? Will be ineffective.
What are your goals? Automating just one account? automating client accounts? Running an army of your own accounts?
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If you want to start growing your accounts I would go for manual, there you will understand your needs for automation, we have all different needs based on our goals.
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I have about 300 accs and I just can not even imagine how can I handle them all doing manual F/U or whatever else… Even without monitoring, recording and filtering… 
In case you think about doing it with 1-5 (or maybe even 10) accs - it is possible and as I understand it will be a bit easier as you won’t fight with ig every freaking minute.
Also, I’m agree to comrads above, who said that it is not the best time to start doing things with IG. Extremely difficult.
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ahahaha. It’s true. 
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we are handling 100 of accounts manually we use jarvee to filter and scrape users and then we follow them manually and you can order following in Instagram app which helps with unfollowing latest followed account we are also not unfollowing accounts from white list and we are doing it from more than a month now with total success so i think that is possible
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You know… Sometimes I just don’t believe my eyes that I really read it…
I can not even imagine doing all that. You are strong people there
And what do you mean manually? From the phones?
How many phones do you need to handle 100 accs?
i think 50-100 phones , im not doing manual actions on all accounts myself lol we got agents working with us , each agent working remotely handling max 1-2 accounts
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Ah… Okay then… Sounds much better and at least realistic
Now I feel better. Lol Was worried about you
thanks for worrying about me mate
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Nice one. Thats exactly what I am doing just on a smaller scale (received blocks after taking them out of Jarvee but they are slowly passing now and new clients are working fine on manual)
Why is it only 1-2 accounts per phone? Have you tried more or you’d rather not risk it?
I think we are a long way from having zero
Automation.
Manual is the way
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you can handle 4-5 accounts per phone if you want there is no risk there we have tried it
How many follow a day manually ?